We attempt to model the neurodegenerative process in schizophrenia, building upon neural vulnerability and dysregulation hypotheses. We attribute the mental disorder to a hereditary predisposition that reduces the individual’s psychological threshold towards stimuli, to the point where even minor daily stresses will directly trigger psychotic experiences.
The behavior of our model depends on an set of physiological parameters (synaptic strengths, blood cortisol, dopamine regulation, autoimmunity). Interpretation of this dependence of parameters of the system’s dynamics offers an analytical explanation for the "normality/disease" dichotomy. The concept of "bifurcation" could be the key to understanding the threshold between these two states.
The symmetric group has a well-known and beautiful combinatorial structure inextricably linked with the ring of symmetric functions. In the first of two talks, we will review the combinatorial structure of the character theory of the symmetric group and its relation to the ring of symmetric functions. In the second, we will explore an analogue obtained via the supercharacter theory of the finite groups of unipotent upper-triangular matrices.
A p-group analogue to symmetric group combinatorics II
